Next manager after Poch

I think he means more that Poch’s management style wears on players mentally and emotionally over time. Thats been his pattern at the club level.

So…poor Copa America and Cherundolo taking over in 2028…?

 

He's coming home

 

2 year contract and if Dolo Porters the Olympics Poch is the man for 2030 if we have a good Copa. If Poch Greggs and Dolo Porters then praying that Nancy can Scaloni....

 

Does it? He was at Tottenham for awhile and even when he left he had a very good relationship with the players. Pochettino isn’t Tuchel or Mourinho, he’s always been fairly popular in the dressing room amongst his players.

 

Notably Germany, Brazil, Netherlands, and Italy are all by varying degrees down from what they all consider to be their rightful plays globally.

 

https://www.youtube.com/live/PmNSerZ_2-I?is=Z3qe-WlW74Oze9S8

Linked it around the beginning of the discussion of the usual what do we need to do thing. All 3 of them gave a bit different answers than I expected, this was my favorite show through the WC, wish they’d keep it going and keep adding all our ex coaches lol.

 

Do you mean going home, as in replacing Scaloni?

 

no more like he is being taken back home to the place where he belongs

 

It took me a minute.

 

Not a lot out there right now. I checked. https://futboljobs.com/en/search-football-jobs/coaches/

No reason not to keep cashing those USSF paychecks until Maresca gets sacked.

 

It’s all done at youth levels and then lead by a central club or two in their leagues, clubs that stick to it out of a committed knowledge that it’s the right way and absolutely proven. Theese styles and systems were created and established by individuals, not culture committees.

I don’t really know anything about Italy or the South Americans, though, maybe that’s pure culture, Argentina seems like pure emotion.

Spain had one of the best leagues in the world and the two best clubs bar none for a century, a century. They all had academies, academies that produced zero teams to win a WC semifinal until 2010, they were always on the outside looking in despite their history, culture, league, etc.

Until Cruyff, one dude, one system, one mandate changed one club,. There is a right way to do things, it’s not a mystery, it’s not magical thinking, it’s codified, it can be implemented. The Spanish FA will take the occasional player from clubs that started copying the model, or a Madrid academy super athlete like Ramos or Casillas, but it’s one club churning out average looking dorks that all play the right way together.

The Netherlands is more deep seated throughout all the clubs and the FA was more participatory in its mandates and proscriptions but it was an absolutely nothing nation of nobodies until a dude, then another dude anointed by the other dude, implemented a philosophy, a system, an infrastructure and a yes culture, culture is a byproduct of philosophy and system.

Clairefontaine is a direct result of an FA trying to implement that philosophy, system and then culture through a top how and parallel system to the clubs. Regional academies feeding the national academy, which runs parallel, not alternative to the club system. Moreover and more importantly maybe, it’s a coaching center and factory with not only a curriculum, but a hands on practical application setting that churns out guys who then have professional careers and implement these ideas all throughout their club academies.

There are practical proven methods out there that can absolutely be customized to “Tge American Way’ and implemented here with some will and some money. We have the money, just google about the last Copa and that shady 501c3 Jay Berhalter created and how much we reaped from that one event, could easily throw down a 10 field training center in NY or LA to match Chicago. Don’t need to derail this, there is plenty of money in the bank to start making dents. It’s the will that’s missing.

Having qualified people in stipulated roles with a public plan and a specified mandate with the commitment and resources behind them at the federation is easily done and a necessity. Any methodology is better than no methodology.

 

I understand what he meant, but there’s also a physical component that Pochettino is notorious for. I think those things are both mitigated by the infrequency of international play compared to club play, even if he leans toward that tendency of wearing players out in individual matches.

 

The case for Poch is the laughable comparison to any other option.

 

Aren't you happy that we have a sugar daddy for US soccer?

Man City and PSG are nothing without a rich sugar daddy.

 

How much of Belgium was getting outcoached, and how much of it was our players being inconsistent, notoriously unreliable regardless of coach, losers, who can't maintain "get stuck in" mentality?

If they just aren't idiots, aren't 3 of those goals not scored by Belgium, because 3 of them were mind numbingly inept goals to give up, it's not like Poch told them to ball watch, or Freese to run out of goalie box, only to have a "Syntax Error," computer malfunction and hand the ball to his opponent, while Ream was told to, "See that ball coming right at you, try to dodge it, like you're auditioning for that '04 Vaughn/Stiller comedy vehicle...., oh and ya know, you've got a stadium designed for mega auditory home field advantage, 12th man, all that ----, how about you, rather than Belgium, come out scared ----less, jittery, and w/zero confidence, and get rolled by a bunch of Belgians....."


As much as I wanna trash Poch, and Egg before him, for these guys not being able to motivate, and use their --- damned brains on things like throw ins, and tracking back in knockout matches of the ----ing World Cup, the reality is that the errors they made against the Dutch four years ago, and Belgium a few weeks ago, are the errors of guys that basically either lack the proper mentality and ability to get focused a la Joe Montana, and Tom Brady, or are just flat out idiots, and cowards, like T.O. and puking McNabb from that Super Bowl 22 years ago. Lets be straight, we know the guys who in big moments, just murder people left and right, guys like Montana, and Brady, and hell, stupid face Eli Manning, and we know the guys that consistently were at their worst under heavy pressure like Dumb Eli's smarter and more talented brother Peyton, Karl Malone, A Rod in baseball, all those types.....it's obvious what they are, we've seen them across sports, we know if a green jacket was on the line, Greg Norman was gonna gack the putt, and prime Tiger Woods, and Scheffler are gonna sink it, or die trying anyway.....

Some of this is always randomness, but watch enough times, and it becomes obvious, Petyon's teams choked unless he was carried by his defense (Denver), or he was playing a comically worse team with a totally inept QB (the bears and Grossman)...that's a hot take, but I know you guys get it....

After watching these losers choke against the Dutch, choke against Belgium, choke in a revenge game with freaking T&T over Couva, choke in a do or die match against Uruguay, and 9 months later vs Panama in that revenge match, we know who these guys are....they are the Jean Van De Velde's of soccer basically. Apply the pressure and they will finish with a triple bogey, even my inept golfing --- would have gotten a double bogey on.

That's where I am now. I spent years thinking motivation was a problem, and if we had a better external motivator, we'd see better performances, and I still think that was probably right, in terms of Egg (see linebacking coach BJ, who in one window got a better performance from them than Egg produced in five years), but this Poch run signaled the limits of external motivation and the necessity for intrinsic, and why these players just can't get it done. Maybe some of it is randomness, they were up for it against Paraguay, against Australia, against Bosnia, but in the end, when I looked at the WC, the biggest reason I worried a QF run would not happen was the very basic reality that it was literally impossible to imagine them putting together 5 straight strong performances when they'd literally never done that in eight years together, and that's what happened, they produced 2 straight, then 1 semi-gag with backups, then 1 more, then the worst knockout performance in our history, or at least since we got curb stomped in the semifinals of the fake 1930 WC.

So yeah, I don't put '26 on Poch, I just don't, if these guys couldn't get motivated to beat T&T away, or Panama or Uruguay at home away, or the Netherlands on neutral grounds in their biggest game, or Belgium at home in an even bigger game, then they simply lack something, at the core, at least some of the core guys we are counting on (I'm looking at Pulisic, Dest, McKennie and Adams in particular, and particularly not at Balo or Tillman)....and we just need players to climb into the set up in the next two-three years who take away the power and the roles those guys have so when it is crunch time, we aren't leaning on guys who are three times failures in their biggest games of their careers respectively (hell, if you want to ---- on Pulisic even more, you can say that after single handedly getting Chelsea in a CL Final with his performance in one of the home and home's of the semi's, he then gacked away probably his best ever chance for a signature moment in a club career in Chelsea's CL Final on that breakaway, yet one more example of him stumbling around in the clutch, that he'd repeat a year later against the Dutch. Not fair, but we all saw it lol, one of those classics, "yeah, Yeah, YEAHH, YEAHHHH!!!, oooooh nooooo moments. ).

 

I think sometimes people think a national style of play needs to be incredibly rigid.

What Crocker described for the US was vague enough to allow for adaptation and changes, but specific enough to give some direction. Aggressive, able to control the ball but decisive in its attack, able to defend one on one, etc.

US Soccer can set a standard and requirements for its National Teams, and that'll influence people. I really don't think anything out of the above is somehow going to limit us. The most important thing is that the signal is sent out that players need to work on their skill sets, work on their tactical knowledge, work on their team play and have a high work rate.

None of those things are bad to tell youth players.

 

Scaloni said I think he’s going to coach till December and then make a decision on his future.

 

No

Yes this. I was (sort of) joking that he's one of us now.

And of course having a little fun with that stupid Britishism at England's expense.

 

It seems there are two paths - you can have the "national style" like Netherlands, Italy, Brazil all of which depend on a serious level of tecnical/soccer IQ/athleticism but maybe have some idiosyncracies - Spain's absolute fanatical wanting to have the ball for example.

Or, you can have a serious level of technical/soccer IQ/athleticism that allows your players to play for the European place teams in the EPL, PSG and the Olympiques (cool band name), the big Spanish 3, the Milans/Juve, Bayern - like Croatia, Belgium, Switzerland.

I think our path is the 2nd barring DeBruyne coming here for some MLS time and loving it so much he becomes our Cruyff....even there I don't think he's revolutionizing the game, he's just a top practitioner of the modern center mid role.

We need coaches that can coach that - using both feet, outplaying to be press resistant, passing with the right weight and spin every time, defending as a unit, patience to not send the prayer ball after the 4th or 5th pass between backline players but keep moving the ball until you move the defense....

 

I’ve never thought we’ve need a national style, we just need to focus on developing players whose skillset matches what’s required at the highest levels of the sport.

 

It's less, but over a multi-year window it still wears players down. The lemons. The rah rah stuff. I do not pretend to know Poch or much about him, but he would be the type of coach, as a player, I think I would start tuning out over time.

 

Gross. Why? We held serve, so what. Same crap that got other mediocre coaches extended. We've seen this before. 2nd cycle coaches are silly, especially in the US where we don't have any coaching tree.

 

I never thought a national fundamental style ever made sense since we've always been a country that was basically taking in people from around the world. Soccer Culture here was largely set up by Italians, Germans, Dutch, Brits, and Latin Americans if memory serves, those are distinct cultures (with Latin American encompassing more than a dozen distinct cultures in and of itself), so how can we really expect to develop some sort of monocultural style of play when we've basically absorbed elements of more than a dozen unique cultural styles, and at least five heavily impactful and distinct approached (FFS, Donovan and Dempsey, not coincidentally are basically products of Mexican/Latin American soccer culture mileu's they grew up within, in Texas and in Southern California)......

Maybe I'm being too stubborn, but while I often fancied the idea of having some sort monocultural foundation to the soccer we play, the reality is, that's never been true, seems like the Northeast was primarily a product of Italian, British, and Latin influences, Germans and Dutch were wherever they were (the coasts, and Chicago and St Louis?), and out west where I grew up, it seemed to be a blend of Italian, Dutch, German, and Latin American all thrown together. So why could or would we ever be really 1 thing? Remember the 90's teams seemed heavily influenced by New Jersey, New York and Virginia, the early 2000's saw a much heavier influence from the West and the South, and now it's coming out of everywhere.......

I'm just not sold any one thing fits so much, though I know American culture wants to see the Argentine fight, and never say die or surrender attitude, just not the dark arts, thuggery, ardido and generalized stupidity and sore losing.

 

I was very skeptical of the Poch hire. It turned out he was just fine, but I don’t see him improving on his results. I’d be happy with a new move. If Poch stays I doubt it will be a full cycle.

 

Your descriptions of how we gave up goals are perfect. I don't know why Puli is everyone's punching bag right now instead of Ream. I don't get it.

Yes, we gave up stuuuupid goals. But, we created nothing. No dangerous chances, scored on a deflection off a free kick.

A lot of this is my personal bias - I will basically almost never believe that 11 top quality athletes who've devoted their lives for this moment, will collectively come out, on the world stage, and all together say "I'm just not into it tonight." But, hey, anything is possible.

I feel like it's much more likely that Belgium knew our passing patterns (there were all kinds of youtube and instagram clips regarding how we were breaking teams down)